


Why Do You Care?

by areyoureddiekids



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, Swearing, areyoureddiekids, cuteness, eddie is not, follow my tumblr and request me more shit, i just needed to write them they are so effing cute, richie is clueless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 21:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12197730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoureddiekids/pseuds/areyoureddiekids
Summary: He's sixteen when he realises he's in love with Eddie Kaspbrak.





	Why Do You Care?

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on my tumblr (areyoureddiekids) and I wanted to post it here. These kids are so damn cute and in love.

He’s sixteen when he realises he’s in love with Eddie Kaspbrak.

See, Richie has never been one for the idea of love. I mean, it’s kind of the assumption or the expectation that he’s gonna get the fuck out of Derry one day and find some girl and do whatever the hell he plans on doing with his life (he’s always kind of liked the idea of working somewhere where his trashmouth and you’re being too loud Richie personality isn’t such a freaking hindrance. Because, really, he’s too loud for Derry).

When he thought of that girl he might find, he never really saw a face. He never really got excited at the prospect of meeting some curvy gal far away from the odd, shitty little town of Derry, Maine. It had been a passing thought when Bill had stuttered out when they were fifteen that he wanted to leave Derry and meet someone, because everyone in their town was odd or terrible. Stan had nodded in agreement, Mike had looked wistfully to the side, and Eddie had pulled one of his wrinkled nose little faces from where he stood in the corner of Bill’s basement, a copy of The Terminator held between his hands. Ben, their chubby friend, had left Derry a year before. Bev, of course, had left after It. Sometimes…. sometimes Richie forgot what It even was. A mess of colour and blood and screams and Eddie’s face held between his shaking hands.

Richie hadn’t thought much on love since then. He was sixteen suddenly, then, and knee deep in High School homework and cigarettes and the taste of cheap beer on his tongue. Because, fuck off would he ever touch vodka, whiskey or gin. It reminded him too much of pressing his hands against his sleeping mother’s cheeks and feeling her warm, spirit stinking breath brush across his fingertips as he wondered how she was still alive.

He sometimes used to blame his parents for his indifference toward love.

Anyway, shit, we’re going off track.

He’s sixteen and it’s a Friday and he’s Richie Tozier so of course he’s going to sneak some of his dad’s beers and hunt down his friends. Thing is, with a call to each of his shitty friends’ houses, he finds out that Bill is out on a date with Sally Smithers, Mike didn’t even bother answering his house phone, Stan is doing homework (fuckin’ homework) and, of course, Bev Marsh is long gone and has forgotten all about them (he sometimes thinks it’s weird, that she never calls and forgot so easily, because Bev loved them and they loved Bev).

He isn’t disappointed. Not really. He quite likes spending time with just Eddie. And, though Richie forces his voice to remain flippant when Ed’s smartly announces he’s free for the evening after Richie informs the boy who’s voice was still breaking that the others are busy, he’s secretly pleased when Eddie insists they go to Richie’s house, because Eddie’s mom is having one of her paranoid episodes and insisting he’s getting unwell again.

‘She’s threatening to take me to the Doctor early tomorrow. Says I have the flu’. There’s a tiredness in Eddie’s voice that Richie clenches his fists at. Though he stood up to his mother far more, Eddie Kaspbrak still found it hard to understand what was lie and truth when it came to his Ma, and Richie hated her for doing that to him.

Richie frowns and presses the plastic phone closer to his face, a sneaky smile rounding his cheeks. He looks down the hallway and into the sitting room, where he can see his Ma lounging in an armchair with the television flickering in front of her. Dad was working late. Again. ‘You don’t sound like you have the flu, Eddie Spaghetti’.

‘That’s because I don’t, dipshit’.

Richie grins and slams the phone down before yelling to his Ma that Eddie was coming round. She doesn’t answer, but Richie knows this doesn’t mean she hasn’t heard him. She just generally ignores him most of the time. He’s excited, he realises, as he stomps up the stairs in his thick black socks, ratty blue jeans and a busy button up shirt. Fingering his glasses up his long nose, he kicks open his bedroom door and glances in the mirror, noting how unruly his mass of dark hair was.

Pointedly, he stops amidst his clothes strewn floor and ruffles his hair even more. That would annoy Ed’s to no end. He would constantly remind Richie that he looked like, as the Kaspbrak shit said, a dumpster diver.

Richie wonders why the fuck he even cares.

He doesn’t worry too much about the mess of his room, nor the fact that his Ma was passed out on the armchair downstairs, watching some shitty soap opera with a half empty bottle of some cheap, supermarket vodka sitting on the carpet by her feet. Eddie, out of what remained of their Loser’s Club, was the one Richie would trust not to judge him. Sure, Stan had an overbearing dad, Bill had mourning, fucked up parents after what happened to Georgie (what happened again? Oh, the murders, the deaths, the fucked-up laughter that echoed around the tunnels like a gun going off), and Mike…well, Mike didn’t even have a mom and dad. Eddie, though, got what it was like to have a shitty mom. He had a truly fucked up, overbearing mother who made Richie’s blood boil when he thought of how much she had screwed up wide eyed and dark-haired Eddie Kaspbrak.

Eh. Screwed up or not, it was no secret Richie preferred Eddie out of all their friends. He didn’t really bother hiding it at all.

It takes only five minutes for the squeaking of brakes to sound outside of Richie’s house, and with one quick look out of his window he sees the shadow of a small form parking their bike next to his driveway. When glistening, large eyes look up at his window, Richie flips them the bird and grins before darting away.

It takes him only fifteen seconds to reach his front door, slam it open and beam wickedly down at the frowning and sighing Eddie Kaspbrak.

‘Took you fuckin’ long enough,’ Richie greets him, stepping aside as Eddie meanders in, carefully toeing off his clean, white trainers and revealing bright red socks pulled just above his ankles. He’s wearing light blue shorts and a black polo shirt with that fucking fanny pack, and Richie thinks for the thousandth time in his life that Eddie was just fuckin’ precious.

‘I left as soon as you called, dick,’ Eddie replies evenly, bending down to place his shoes neatly by the door amidst the mess of Richie’s, his Ma’s and his Pa’s shoes. For some reason, Richie eyes the neat, dark curls that rest at the base of Eddie’s neck, and thanks the stars that Eddie had allowed this small bit of rebellion against his psychotic mother. Although his hair was still immaculately kept, Richie couldn’t help but appreciate how longer hair suited the pale boy.

Richie blinks. Richie wonders why the fuck he just thought that. Richie moves swiftly along and grins yet again. ‘C’mon then, Eds. Up we go’. He doesn’t miss the way Eddie’s wide brown eyes flicker toward the dimly lit sitting room, before settling back on Richie’s face. It was always like this. Always the concern. Richie sighs. ‘She’s fine. Come on’.

He speeds up the stairs and Eddie follows, his feet padding softly after Richie’s loud steps. There is the usual sigh and tut as Eddie enters Richie’s room, to which Richie snorts and asks Eddie if he’d ask his Ma to come over and clean Richie’s room for him. ‘I’ll pay her good,’ he says, winking and snorting. ‘By that, I mean-’

Eddie grimaces and winkles his nose and pulls that prissy fucking face that always has Richie wanting to grab his cheeks and bop his nose. ‘God, you’re so gross-’

‘Bill’s on a date with Sally Smithers,’ Richie cuts across, throwing himself onto his desk chair as Eddie settles onto the edge of Richie’s bed, eyeing the clothes strewn across is distastefully. The sight of Eddie with his bare knees pressed tightly together and his hands clasped tightly between them has a smile twitching at his mouth. He’s just so cute.

‘I know. He told us today at school he was seeing her,’ Eddie replies, toes wiggling in his socks. ‘After Gym. After the showers’.

‘He did?’ Richie asks because, shit, he was barely even listening. He was too busy glaring daggers at the shits who were making fun of Eddie tiny frame as the boys showered away the sweat of Gym. Funny thing was, it was the freaking AV geeks who were doing it, and Richie could safely say they had no right making fun of other people’s looks. Little shits. Especially Eddie’s look, because Eddie was like a…a fucking pretty snowflake, or something. ‘Oh. I’d rather spend time with my Ed’s, anyway’.

Eddie colours at that and Richie grins. He freaking loved making Eddie blush. It happened more and more since they were kids, since the world tilted and shit hit the fan.

‘You want a beer?’ he says, because it’s almost like a ritual now. It wasn’t uncommon for Eddie to come to Richie’s when the others were busy, and it wasn’t uncommon for Richie to offer him a drink.

It also wasn’t uncommon for Eddie to reply, ‘Do you know how disgusting that shit is? The calories, the taste – it tastes like piss, Richie-’

‘How do you know what piss tastes like, Eds?’

‘Beep beep, Richie. And don’t call me Eds! I hate that!’

Richie snorts and reaches behind him and into his open draw, pulling out a can of cheap beer and cracking the cap. It smells like it tastes. Bitter and sweet at the same time and just a little bit gross. ‘Fuckin’ liar’.

Eddie shakes his head and clenches his hands in his lap, his eyes dipping to the floor and a splash of pink spreading up his neck. Richie watches like a man starved of the sight as he brings the can to his lips and takes a deep swig, dark eyes on Eddie’s pale skin flushed rosy. ‘You shouldn’t drink that,’ Eddie says, looking up to meet Richie’s gaze. ‘It’s bad for you’.

‘I know that,’ Richie says, and it comes out sharper than he intends it to. He hates it when his friends say shit about drinking in front of him, because he knows better than anyone how bad the shit can be for you. It’s fucking hypercritical, anyway. If there’s some party, or when anyone is drinking down by the Barrens, then they don’t care about drinking. Then it’s okay for Richie to get battered and dance to Africa by Toto because, really, that song was fucking great. Once, Eddie actually got a little tipsy and danced with him, too.

So what if he likes to drink at the weekends? It’s the freaking weekend.

‘I know you do, Richie,’ says Eddie, and it’s soft and not teasing at all and Richie stops drinking and stares at him, swallowing the beer tightly. Eddie is sitting on the edge of his bed, ankles crossed and pale legs bare and wide brown eyes looking dead at Richie, opening his mouth as if to speak again. 

Richie blurts out the first thing he can think of, because Eddie’s eyes on him are making him itchy and uncomfortable and he somehow feels like a piece of trash next to a fucking bottle of bleach, because Eddie is clean and perfect and Richie is not. ‘Why the fuck do you care, Eddie Spaghetti?’

Eddie stalls and colours and glares furiously at Richie, his Adams Apple bobbing as he looks pointedly to the wall across the room. ‘You’re such a fuckin’ dick, Richie’. A pause in which Richie opens his mouth to retaliate with some grinning, smart-ass remark, but then Eddie says, ‘Why the fuck do you care about what those dicks at school say about me and how I look, or how my mom is, huh?’

Richie breathes in.

The answer arrives his head like it has always been there, but nobody had ever bothered to ask the question. Why was it that Richie Tozier always slung his arm around Eddie Kaspbrak’s shoulders when their group met after school, but no one else’s? Why was it that he watched closely when Eddie breathed too heavily in Gym, because even though his breathing problems were bullshit, Richie knew it still scared Eddie? Why was it he kept a spare inhaler in his messy back-pack, and had flipped Stan off when the other boy had found out? Why was it that he hadn’t called Bill, or Stan, or Mike at all tonight, but had convinced himself that his friends would be busy with the things that usually took up their lives, rather than just ask? Hell, Bill had been on a date. Maybe Richie had been listening after all. Still, he knows. He wanted Eddie all to himself. 

Richie breathes out.

So, Richie blinks and Eddie blinks back, because it’s been nearly a full minute and Richie hasn’t answered, and no one had ever rendered him freaking speechless before. Eddie is starting to look nervous, as if he is actually worried such a simple question might have broken the trashmouth Tozier.

‘Shit,’ says Richie, cradling the tin can in his hands and blinking behind his jam-jar glasses at the bewildered looking Eddie. He kicks his legs out in front of him and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘I think it’s because I’m in love with you, Eds’.

He honestly sees Eddie’s breath catch.

It takes a moment for the smile to spread across Eddie’s face, and Richie is quite sure that smile could kick the mother-fucking suns ass. Suddenly, he’s half-smiling too. He’s placing the beer hastily on the side and it’s sloshing over his comic-strewn desk, but he doesn’t care because Eddie Kaspbrak is stumbling across the room and planting his mouth hastily against Richie’s, and it is fucking great.

Understatement. It is fucking fantastic.

When he pulls away, Eddie is practically sitting on his lap with his hands placed on Richie’s shoulders, and Richie is holding Eddie by the waist and Eddie is smiling with the least threatening glare Richie has ever seen (because Richie has seen Eddie’s threatening glare, and it is fucking terrifying. Do not underestimate him, because Richie has seen him fuck up something they call It when they were just thirteen) and he is sighing and tugging at Richie’s mop of hair and telling him, ‘About time, you fuckin’ trashmouth. Bill was about ready to smack you if you took any longer’. 

Richie nods and agrees because, shit, how had it taken him so long?

‘And don’t call me Ed’s, you fuckin’ dick’.


End file.
